


Loving in the in Between

by saltwaterselkie



Series: Ineffable Husbands [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angel Crowley (Good Omens), Demon Aziraphale (Good Omens), Demon!Aziraphale, Ducks, First Kiss, First Kisses, Fluff, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), M/M, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Post-Apocalypse, angel!Crowley, at least not from my perspective, at least temporarily, seriously there is nothing remotely stressful in this fic, something in between demons and angels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-20 14:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19993963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltwaterselkie/pseuds/saltwaterselkie
Summary: Aziraphale wakes up the morning after their respective trial and lack-of-trial as a demon. What's Crowley supposed to do but feel bad about it? (Maybe he should give kissing a try)





	Loving in the in Between

It was Crowley’s fault, really, like it always was.

Aziraphale didn’t seem to think so, but then Aziraphale wasn’t the one who had to look at the angel he loved with snake-slit pupils and charcoal-black wings. Aziraphale just had to deal with falling. Crowley had to deal with knowing it was his fault.

“It’s really not all that bad, my dear,” Aziraphale said, adjusting his tie with that self-satisfied smirk on his face Crowley always associated with a jump in his heart. “At least I don’t need to do any… you know, _demony_ things. Not when we’ve got our own side now, anyway. As you said.”

“Well, I’m not going to stop calling you angel,” Crowley mumbled. He was in his usual bench-sitting position, which meant he had one arm slung over the back and his legs splayed out in front of him like he was just getting used to a human body. It was a choice.

“That’s quite all right, dear,” Aziraphale replied. “I’ve gotten used to it, you know.”

Crowley bit his lower lip, and suddenly it all came rushing out. “How can you be so _calm_ , angel? You’ve… you’ve gone and bloody fallen.”

“Oh, I know,” Aziraphale said. “I must say, it would’ve been nicer knowing _why_ , but it isn’t really that bad, Crowley. It’s just… oh, I don’t know. Perhaps it’s that it felt inevitable. For so long. I _gave away my sword_ , Crowley. That’s not something I expected to slide for as long as it did, anyway.”

The morning after they’d thought they’d made it out scot-free, after the demons and the angels had promised to leave them alone, Crowley had gotten a call from Aziraphale. A rather peculiar call. And when the Bentley had screamed into a parking spot that may have just been miraculously pulled out of nowhere, directly in front of the angel’s bookshop, Aziraphale had been standing primly on the front steps, waiting.

It was the eyes that gave it away. Aziraphale hadn’t been a demon long enough to start hating them. Not like Crowley. And Aziraphale’s tiny gilded reading glasses (the ones he called “nifty” with no sense of shame whatsoever) did nothing to keep Crowley from seeing the characteristic slits.

“I’ve fallen,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley kept waiting for the break in his voice, for the part where Aziraphale told Crowley why. When he might say “it’s because I’ve been consorting with demons,” or, more specifically, “because I’ve been consorting with you.” But the angel had said nothing of the sort.

Crowley was sure that would’ve been the worst torment God could’ve had in store for him. Give him 6,000 bloody years to fall in love with the most oblivious angel on the face of the earth and then, finally, just when Crowley thought he might be getting somewhere, start punishing that same angel in front of him. Not that that theory was entirely _out_ of the question, of course, but Aziraphale was obviously fallen, and obviously had somehow gotten over it in the course of a morning, and was obviously still handsome and kind and Crowley had better stop there before he got himself into even _more_ trouble.

They’d made their way to the benches by the ducks, because, really, demons and angels – or, rather, just demons – were creatures of habit as much as the humans they lived among. And they’d been attempting to figure out why exactly it was that Aziraphale was a principality no longer. Or, rather, _Crowley_ was attempting to figure it out. Aziraphale was munching contentedly on an iced treat from the park vendor. “It’s not like I’m going to start wearing black,” Aziraphale mumbled through the mouthful of sweet. “I’ve got standards, you know. I can’t just pull it off like you can, my dear.”

And then, in a single instant, everything shifted.

It wasn’t the _my dear_ , not those two words Aziraphale had made into an addendum so often that Crowley might’ve stopped registering them, if not for the fact that they made his day every time. Rather, it was because suddenly, very suddenly, Crowley’s world had exploded into color.

Oh, he had a demon’s memory, that was true, and he could remember the first time he’d seen Aziraphale’s face while they stood atop the Eastern Gate as clear as anything, but somehow, _somehow_ Crowley had forgotten what it was to see the whole spectrum. The whole _rainbow_ , all the way to the ultraviolet that humans couldn’t perceive, not just what his dichromatic snake’s eyes could pick up on.

He stared at the people walking around him in their bright summer colors with eyes as wide as he could get them to go (stupid little human eyes, only the two of them, and why couldn’t he have _more_ when they were showing him something as incredible as _this_ ). At the riot of every color he’d been missing out on for _centuries_.

Aziraphale made a nonplussed little sound in the back of his throat. “Oh, Crowley,” he said, displeasure evident in his voice, “what on earth did you do to your tattoo? I really _liked_ it, you know, I thought-” and that was when his eyes flickered up to Crowley’s own, and he _saw_.

Crowley knew. He knew that if he was to look in a mirror at that exact moment, he would see the dark brown eyes he’d always had as an angel staring back at him, glimmering with the barest hint of mischievousness. The eyes he’d had as an angel…

Somehow, Aziraphale was sitting here wearing the burden that should have been Crowley’s, and Crowley had stolen away angelhood from his best friend. That was the only explanation.

“My _lord_ ,” Aziraphale said, and there was something husky about it when he said it, and Crowley suddenly realized the best part of being an angel again (if there _was_ a best part, knowing that perhaps his _un_ falling, so to speak, was directly connected to Aziraphale’s fall). He could feel it. Just like Aziraphale had said, when they were in Tadfield together before the end of the world and the beginning of everything else. Crowley could feel love.

He could feel _Aziraphale’s_ love.

Aziraphale.

Aziraphale’s love.

Aziraphale loved him.

“ _Angel_ ,” Crowley gasped out.

“Why, yes, I suppose you are,” Aziraphale said good-naturedly. “Suits you, my dear.”

“ _You love me_ ,” Crowley said, intending for it to come out as a half-hiss. Such an easy way to not seem vulnerable, to armor the feelings he wasn’t supposed to have. Instead, it came out as a half-choked gurgle of a phrase that almost made Crowley wince, except for the fact that he could feel Aziraphale’s love blossoming when he heard it.

“Why, yes, my dear, of course I love you.”

Crowley’s world was rather falling apart. “And you _didn’t think to tell me._ ”

Aziraphale looked rather peevish. “I was under the impression you knew.”

“Well, I would’ve bloody done something about it if I knew, now, wouldn’t I have?” Crowley spat out. “ _Wouldn’t I have?_ ”

Aziraphale’s gaze darted away from him for a moment, then back, that furtive sort of look that always made Crowley feel like he’d walk through a thousand churches, burn his feet on miles of consecrated ground, just to see it again. Not that he’d have any trouble with consecrated ground now, he was sure. He could probably go for a holy water bath and ask for his _own_ rubber duck, if he so desired. “Hmm,” Aziraphale said softly, “perhaps you should do something about that, then, my dear.”

Suddenly, there was nothing relaxed about Crowley’s position at all. He was no longer sprawled on the bench, but perched, nose inches away from Aziraphale. Aziraphale took another lick of his lolly.

Crowley miracled it out of his hand. He was out of practice drawing from heaven for the miracle, and instead of the treat disappearing outright, it materialized over an unwitting passerby, dropping directly onto her bright yellow sunhat. She pulled off her hat with a cry of disbelief and began looking above her for unidentified flying objects – she’d heard from a friend of a friend that aliens bearing a message of peace and goodwill had been spotted in the last few days, and she wasn’t about to miss it if they’d chosen to eat a lolly right above her head.

Crowley didn’t care.

There was a reason he didn’t care. The reason was that his lips were pressed up against his angel’s, and if there was a better way to experience true bliss Crowley wasn’t quite sure he’d ever find it. He could feel Aziraphale’s love cradling him, calling to him, and _lord_ , Crowley wasn’t sure how Aziraphale had kept away from him this long if this was what Crowley himself had _felt_ like all those years.

A few passersby glanced their way. Crowley executed his second angelic miracle of the century and suddenly notice slid off of the two of them like water off of ducks. Crowley twined his hands in Aziraphale’s curly blonde hair, traced a fingertip down the line of his neck, drew him close. Tried not to forget where he was.

They were still an angel and a demon, but somehow, everything had flipped, and it made it quite alright to be sitting on a park bench snogging each other like teenage lovers. Crowley would’ve fallen a thousand times if Aziraphale would be waiting for him at the bottom each time, ready with a kiss like this one.

They were immortal. They had eternity. Which meant that they could do this again, and again, as many times as they liked. Which was the only reason Crowley was ever able to pull back and brush his thumb against Aziraphale’s lower lip instead of just attempting to kiss him to discorporation.

“ _Well_ ,” Aziraphale said, a slight flush in his cheeks. “ _That_ was rather a fine idea, Crowley. I should’ve fallen ages ago, if _that_ was to be my punishment.”

Crowley tried to say something suave and witty, something to indicate that he didn’t feel like he’d just been hit in the face with a frying pan. “Mhhblrrr” was about an average approximation of what came out instead.

They managed to make it back to Aziraphale’s bookshop before the kissing started up again. Such a wonderful, human thing, kissing. Crowley wondered if kissing had been part of the ineffable plan. Humans pushing their face-holes together had never appealed to him before, but kissing Aziraphale was something very, very different, indeed. Kissing Aziraphale was like the act of flying. It was the opposite of the fall. It was clean and pure and good and…

Halfway through their second snogging session, Crowley opened his eyes to find Aziraphale’s were no longer those of a demon. Though they weren’t quite the ethereal blue Crowley had grown so used to over the years, they were quite obviously angel eyes. For the time being, it seemed, angels were what they both were.

Crowley wasn’t going to claim that things became miraculously better when Aziraphale fell the first time. He _was_ going to claim that things became miraculously better when they had their first kiss. When they drove out to the countryside in his Bentley and picknicked, this time both as demons – or, rather, part-demons, because with every shift back and forth Crowley could see a bit more color as a demon, see a bit less ultraviolet as an angel.

By the end of it all, when they’d gone days without shifting again, Crowley and Aziraphale weren’t quite angels and weren’t quite demons anymore.

Crowley stroked one of Aziraphale’s wings, smoothing out the mottled white and black feathers. Aziraphale gave a pleased little shudder underneath his hand. “Do you know,” Crowley said, “I rather think either one of us could survive the hellfire or the holy water now. Don’t you?”

“I’d be inclined to agree, my dear.” Aziraphale sighed in contentment as Crowley switched to his other wing, fingers brushing in between his shoulder blades before he continued grooming. “You know, I almost expected that we’d lose our miracles, but…”

“They work just as well as ever,” Crowley interjected. “Does it feel for you like you’re pulling from somewhere in between?”

“Perhaps we’ll have to report to the ground floor now,” Aziraphale chuckled. “Seeing as I don’t think the basement or the penthouse would take us.”

Crowley pressed a kiss to the base of Aziraphale’s neck. He could feel Aziraphale’s love flicker up a little more as he did it – not nearly as strong a feeling as Crowley could sense he had been pure angel, but he preferred it this way, with the both of them just enough angel to get a taste of the other's desire. He surmised Aziraphale did, too.

Aziraphale turned to Crowley and beamed, and Crowley melted about as much as a demon-angel creature can melt. “Do you think the others would be curious to see what we’ve become?”

Crowley made a sort of noncommittal noise in his throat and scrunched his nose. “I rather think they’d run away screaming. Hastur in particular. He’s good at screaming, Hastur is. I think he practices.”

“I’d like to see Gabriel screaming,” Aziraphale said wistfully. “If only once.”

“Well,” Crowley said, considering, “given that they can’t really hurt us anymore, and we know where the escalator goes up from…” he raised an eyebrow, and he could see the moment when Aziraphale understood, “I suppose we could make that happen.”

And they did, of course. Right after another hour or so of shenanigans for two.

_Really_ , Crowley thought, adjusting his shirt as he and Aziraphale stepped off of the escalator to heaven, still chortling at Gabriel’s high-pitched screech (and even Michael’s slightly-widened eyes, which was a victory in and of itself), _it’s too bad we didn’t get that on video._

But then again. Aziraphale’s smile?

That was enough.


End file.
